At least 1,200 people lost their chance to vote on election night because of bad planning by councils, according to an official report by the electoral watchdog which says the entire system of running elections needs to be modernised.

In a scathing report, the Electoral Commission today accuses local authorities and returning officers of failing to provide enough staff at polling stations, allocating too many voters to each station and then failing to respond when the problems became apparent.

But it also acknowledges that a "perfect storm" of late voters and higher turnout caused the queues that built up outside at least 27 polling stations in 16 authorities on election night and prevented people from casting their ballots.

The inquiry into the election night fiasco identified 1,200 people who were locked out of polling stations at 10pm. Many more may have given up during the day after getting stuck in queues or gone unrecorded.

It calls on parliament urgently to review the electoral laws to allow people who are still queuing at 10pm to vote.

Jenny Watson, the chair of the Electoral Commission, told the Guardian that longer-term reforms should go much further.

"We have a Victorian system and we need to modernise it to avoid the kind of problems we saw happening again. With a government with such an ambitious programme of constitutional and political reform I would have thought part of that could be democratic modernisation," she said.

"In some places people didn't take account of the fact that turnout would be higher in a general election. A change in lifestyles means more people are likely to turn out later in the day. Those things created the perfect storm."

Under the current system, responsibility for running the election rests with individual returning officers. In its report, the electoral commission said the system needed to be better coordinated, with a power of direction to order returning officers to conduct the ballot in a certain way.

Watson said: "Returning officers in the areas affected did not properly plan for, or react to, polling day problems. That is unacceptable. People in these areas were badly let down and have every right to be angry. The current system is too fragmented, with hundreds of independent returning officers making their own decisions."

The report says that in some areas returning officers, usually the council chief executive, failed to follow guidance. There was "poor planning", inadequate staffing and some were "unable to cope" with demand at the close of polling.

The commission concluded that while it had no new powers over retuning officers, it would issue more prescriptive guidance and monitor the extent to which it is adhered. The worst-affected areas were in Birmingham, Hackney, Islington, Lewisham, Liverpool, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Newcastle upon Tyne, Runnymede and Sheffield, where voters demonstrated outside Nick Clegg's house after being barred at the polling station door.

At St Paul's church polling station in the Birmingham Ladywood constituency, turnout went up from 18% in previous years to 40%. As the 10pm deadline drew near, the presiding officer checked the watches of every member of staff, and chose to abide by the watch which displayed a time five minutes behind the others. Ballot papers were hastily issued, but up to 100 electors were turned away and the police were called to disperse the crowd.

In Hackney, north-east London, 272 people lost their votes at six polling stations, where the commission said there were not enough staff. Another 300 voters were affected at seven polling stations in Manchester, some of which were also understaffed.

At a polling station in Wolverton, Milton Keynes, 100 people were locked out after 10pm while those who were inside the door were allowed to vote. The returning officer cited his staff's safety as the reason for his decision to close the doors.

In contrast, at St Chad's Church in Chesterton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, the returning officer consulted the guidance then ignored it, and allowed anyone who had arrived by 10pm to vote.

The report says: "In most cases, the common factors were inadequate planning processes and systems – in particular unrealistic, inappropriate or unreliable assumptions; and inadequate risk management and contingency planning."

The report is based on evidence from 500 of the people affected and interviews with the returning officers involved.

About this article

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 11.44 EDT on Thursday 20 May 2010.
It was last modified at 07.28 EST on Tuesday 27 January 2015.
It was first published at 09.25 EDT on Thursday 20 May 2010.